Gothic Granola

Pancakes, in general, are my culinary nemesis.

It's been so long since I've posted a savoury, non-baked, or non-ice cream recipe, I can't remember.

Blueberry Un-Blues: Blueberry Blue Cornbread Measure twice, cut once, as the adage goes. Measure once, make it, measure again, remake it, I say. Seeing blueberry cornbread “by the pound” at work made me want to make my own, with whole grain flours. In the first iteration, I used all coarse-grind blue cornmeal to make it truly blue.

Maximus, the male of my aunt and uncle’s pair of cats, likes to hang out with me when I meditate in the morning.  When I switched from exercising on the ground floor to the top floor of the house (gotta follow the WiFi, man), he became confused and meowed loudly at me.  Max caught on soon enough and knows to find me upstairs.

Thoughts on a thirty-minute lunch, drafted during such.  I’ll provide the recipe first so if that’s all you’re here for, you can have your bread and skip the pontification.  I’m debating whether to mention black beans in the title of this recipe.  Depending on your audience, you may want to omit it for bean-phobes.  There’s no need to worry about the beans’ indigestibility because they are obliterated in a blender or food processor before incorporation in the rest of the product. Bread atop carnival squash curry

This one’s a seasonal curry this time .   I think I’ve made something from almost every one of Chef Michael Kiss’s cooking classes I’ve attended at the Old Town Whole Foods.   I like his food philosophy: “An onion is an onion.”   Using what’s available to you will create a unique dish with your personal touch.   Since I’m just about incapable of following a recipe to a tee (I have opinions about what I put in my mouth.   Strong opinions.)—or a tea—I like that advice.

So I may not have baked dessert, but I did bake anadama bread and muffins this week.  I love baking in cast-iron.

Brick by brick, Clock by tick, No matter how thin, No matter how thick. Papa told Mama, and Laura told Nick, 'You can move a mountain If you do it brick by brick.' The above song is from the original computer game Lego Island , circa 1998.  One-day-at-a-time philosophy crops up in the most wonderful of places.  One brick at a time, I'm reorganising this blog into a more functional resource, letting the archivist brain run wild.

Last week, my mom made chocolate cream cheeze frosting for chocolate cupcakes for my super-sweet sixteen (graduation) party, and the frosting never set.  She used blue-label Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese, which contains partially hydrogenated oils, tastes chalky, and weeps in the fridge.  

Why is there an egg in the original recipe for “Banana-Flax Breakfast Muffins?”  The recipe has a quarter cup of ground flaxseed, which is equivalent to 4 eggs in the vegan baking world.  The egg  seems to add only unnecessary cholesterol since the chemical leaveners and buttermilk and flaxseed do an excellent job of leavening and binding, effectively replacing the role of an egg.  Furthermore,  why is there 1 cup of sugar in  breakfast  muffins?  Bananas are naturally sweet; they really don’t need the help.

Burny fingers and muffins don't go well together, kids. Pro Tip: store your cooling rack somewhere other than under your oven. Why is there an egg in the original recipe for “Banana-Flax Breakfast Muffins?”  The recipe has a quarter cup of ground flaxseed, which is equivalent to 4 eggs in the vegan baking world.  The egg  seems to add only unnecessary cholesterol since the chemical leaveners and buttermilk and flaxseed do an excellent job of leavening and binding, effectively replacing the role of an egg.  Furthermore,  why is there 1 cup of sugar in  breakfast  muffins?  Bananas are naturally sweet; they really don’t need the help.

Final circle: polenta pie.  My uncle asked me if this was vegan shepherd’s pie, and I low-blood-sugar snapped that it wasn’t.  In hindsight, it is: Italian peasant shepherd’s pie.  I used turnip greens instead of the original spinach because I usually eat spinach for salad greens anyway.  Besides, spinach is bourgeois these days; turnip greens, though being rediscovered by hipsters and the like, are peasant food.  Using kale would straddle both the traditional and the elite.  Toscano kale would just  make  this, but, alas, I settled for the frozen turnip greens.  I also added a can of beans since I like protein.  I used black beans, which makes the dish a tad southwestern.  If I used cumin and the Southwest spice profile…you see where this can go.  I’ve been making combinations of grains lately to use up the odd 2/3 cup of rice, quinoa, lentils, et cetera all in one big batch.  Since I didn’t have enough polent...

I’ve referenced this cornbread recipe too much not to post it, finally.  This is my “I need food now” bread for weekend mornings. It's similar to this cornbread , but it's not the same.

After intern work on Friday, I metro’d to Trader Joe’s on the way to my brother’s apartment and bought dinner and dessert ingredients.  My parents are in the area, visiting my brother and me.  We ended up going out to dinner, which meant two OK salads for me and cider for dessert. At least I had time to make some sweet cornbread to sneak with me, for edible grains and solid dessert purposes.